Technology and Access, Not Censorship and Oppression Will Eventually Win
This spring, I spent a semester studying in Europe. I didn’t have a phone along for the ride and the first few days I didn’t have an Internet connection – I felt my life had turned upside down without endless hours on Facebook and dozens of daily texts. My solution was simple: I found an Internet café and had immediate and uncensored access. I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have easy Web access that day, only at the cost of a cappuccino. If I were a student in Beijing or Tehran, I might not have that simple luxury.
Since I started my internship at LaunchSquad this summer, I became more aware of Internet injustices in other parts of the world, and censorship that I’ve never been affected by.
In China, the “Great Firewall” censors the country’s nearly 300 million Internet users daily, and tens of thousands of sites are blocked by the Communist government. The 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, just a month ago, resulted in new levels of censorship with the artificial blocking of social networks including YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Wordpress. The Chinese government is also now attempting to require all PCs to be sold with Green Dam software, a supposed blocker of harmful sites, but the software is far from precise and remains highly controversial.
In Xinjiang province the past few weeks, the Chinese government attempted to block sites such as Facebook and Twitter to prevent the results of recent riots. The riots resulted in over 140 dead and 800 injured, facts that should be impossible for even the strongest censors to hide.
The Iranian government has played a similar censorship game after the presidential elections on June 12, though it’s more of a concerted effort to limit freedom of speech and anti-government resistance rather than censor specific Web sites. Despite the information blockade, amateur journalists and supporters within and outside of Iran have actively fought through the artificial barriers, and are fighting for free speech – and a change in Iran’s government.
I am part of the majority of the United States who struggles after mere moments without endless Internet access, a privilege people in other parts of the world have never known. It’s inspiring to know there are various tools to fight this oppression, so everyone can gain access to the Web I am all too familiar with, and often take for granted.
daybreakers ipod In fact, technology has a huge hand in fighting oppression and censorship. One of LaunchSquad’s clients, AnchorFree, has a product called Hotspot Shield, which is a free anti-censorship tool. Hotspot Shield is a free download that creates a tunnel between wireless routers and computers, making it so governments cannot track user locations, and therefore cannot filter Internet content. As a result, no matter where users are in the world, they can access Twitter, YouTube, Google and all Internet sites as if they were in the United States.
Hotspot Shield opens up the ability to take a political stand, like the Iranian election, or report on injustice, such as the hundreds of deaths and injuries from Xinjiang riots. For others it means the simple ability to send an e-mail to keep in touch. The implications of open and free communication are really priceless. Social media and viral tools such as Hotspot Shield, combined with the passion of individuals fighting censorship oppression (or just struggling without e-mail access), can hopefully be powerful enough to break down censorship and provide the freedom of the Web worldwide.
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Словарь Юриста